Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all of you, Happy Thanksgiving! Forgive me if this is really nerdy, but I feel I have a duty to fellow word-nerds, and a debt to the etymologists who did all the heavy lifting, to try to capture the thought in a more creative way. What can I say — words are my provender. What do you think? :)

The singular noun is certainly obsolete in today’s English, but I don’t think it’s correct to say it “no longer exists in Modern English” (emphasis mine). Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster both included it in their dictionaries, alongside the plural, and they certainly spoke Modern English. Of course, by “Modern English”, you mean English as used in the present day; whereas, I mean English as it has been used since the middle of the 16th century.

I’ve seen examples of thank as a singular noun as late as the 1890’s. It was certainly in use at the time of the first American Thanksgiving. Just because it has fallen into desuetude over the last century or so doesn’t mean my diagram needs correction.

And by the way, a “Happy Thanksgiving to you too” wouldn’t be unwelcome. You may prefer to quibble; I prefer to gobble. ;)

Thank you, David. And your “thank(s)” reminded me — I don’t know how I forgot this — that I went through a phase back in college where I insisted on spelling it thancs, in reference to the word’s Old English origins. Just the silly affectations of an budding philologist. :)

I’m glad the abbreviations posed you no problems. But now you’ve got me wondering, too. If anyone out there has any trouble with the abbreviations, or wants to make guesses where uncertain, don’t be shy. I could just include a legend here in the comments, but in case you want to try decoding them yourselves, I’ll put that off.

Shouldn't L de have a macron? (Though this is not the reason dêbêre has a long first syllable anyway. As a preverb it's shortened before a vowel, and then the contraction makes it long again. I can see that saying dê + habêre > dêbêre could be confusing, but to be precise you can quote the older, uncontracted form dehibêre attested in Plautus.)

Thanks, Hlaford. And yes, you’re right on both counts. I’ll try to make those two small corrections when I get a chance. I don’t always use macrons in Latin, since it is more tedious to produce them than it is most of the other diacriticals I use. Then, when I do decide to use them, I always seem to miss one. And of course, pre for prae was just a slip. I also omitted the intermediate stages of both those Latin words because I was having trouble with spacing them appropriately. I did originally plan to show them.

Going back to find this chart, I just realized that the link from habere to habban must be wrong, unless Grimm's Law has been abolished when I wasn't looking. No, the Latin reflex of habban must be capere 'grasp, seize' < *kap-.

Ah, yes, you’re right, John. Goodness, what would I do without you, ever vigilant about correcting my slips? And so snarkily too. Still, it must be some kind of compliment that you were coming back to this post almost a year later. And I see you can comment again. Hooray! :)

Who is this guy?

I'm an avid writer, both professionally and privately, husband to Jennifer (the most wonderful woman in the world), and dad to two terrific dogs, Max and Leo (only coincidentally named after the two main characters of Mel Brooks's The Producers). I live in Bellevue, Washington, near Lake Sammamish. I think I'm an interesting guy. What do you think? Drop me a line to let me know: visualweasel [at] yahoo.com.